Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory.

• Author: Klinger, Geoffrey
• Position: Book review

Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory. By Francis J. Mootz III. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. 256 pp. $49.50 cloth.

I am always grateful for any attempt to revitalize the important historical and cotemporary connections between the theory and practice of rhetoric, and the theory and practice of law. Francis J. Mootz III,'s Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory addresses important and wide-ranging issues in the recent resurfacing of this relationship. Work in this area is of vital importance, especially given the challenges confronting the law in the face of increasing globalization. The issue of globalization is one of many organizing themes of this book. Indeed, Mootz contends that globalization "raises the specter of relativism" (p. xii). In an extended passage, he continues:

The global age threatens to devolve into one of two equally unsatisfactory trajectories: either the concept of justice will be a convenient tool for justifying the triumph of a particular worldview through the exercise of military, economic, and political power, or the vacuity of the concept will be invoked to absolve us of responsibility for the nihilistic chaos resulting from the refusal to permit any one worldview to hold sway (p. xiii).

This observation relates to a second organizing theme for the book. This theme centers on the author's desire to find an alternative philosophical grounding for the theory and practice of law, somewhere between absolutism and nihilism. In this regard, the author's project seems similar to that of Richard Rieke. In his 1986 essay to honor of the work of Chaim Perelman, Rieke writes: "The rhetorical or argumentation perspective of judicial decisions provides the explanation that falls between the rules or positivistic position on the one hand and nihilism on the other" (p. 228). Mootz aims toward the same end in his project, and turns to contemporary philosophy and rhetoric as a way to negotiate the Scylla and Charbides of modern jurisprudence. Like Rieke, Mootz turns to the work of Chaim Perelman, among others. Importantly, Mootz frames his text with quotations about the work of Perelman, Gadamer, and Nietzsche. At first glance, this seems like an unlikely group, but Mootz does a masterful job of finding connections among these and other writers. The breadth of knowledge demonstrated in this text inspiring.

The turn to rhetoric is equally noteworthy. He...